Word.ws English Dictionary

out-paramour the Turk

out-paramour the Turk verb: to have many romantic affairs.

out-paramour the turk: to have many romantic affairs
Image: Sandor Alexander Svoboda (1826-1896), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

out-paramour the Turk (third-person singular simple present out-paramours the Turk, present participle out-paramouring the Turk, simple past and past participle out-paramoured the Turk)

  1. (archaic, idiomatic) To have many romantic affairs.
    • [W]ine loued I deeply, dice deerely, and in vvoman out paromord the Turke, […]c. 1603–1606 (date written), [William Shakespeare], […] His True Chronicle Historie of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters. […] (First Quarto), London: […] Nathaniel Butter, […]...
    • Thus Woman, Nature’s chastest work, / Lust-struck, out-paramours the Turk.1766, Evan Lloyd, The Methodist, reprint edition, University of California, Los Angeles, published 1972, →OCLC

Forms of out-paramour the Turk

third-person singular presentout-paramours the Turk
present participleout-paramouring the Turk
past participleout-paramoured the Turk
pastout-paramoured the Turk

Origin of out-paramour the Turk

Uttered by the character Edgar in Shakespeare's King Lear (see quote). Likely a reference to one of various Ottoman Sultans (often referred to as the Grand Turk) famous for their large harems, or to the more general practice of polygyny associated with Islam.

Questions about out-paramour the Turk

What does out-paramour the Turk mean?
Out-paramour the Turk means to have many romantic affairs.
What part of speech is out-paramour the Turk?
Out-paramour the Turk is a verb.
What is the past tense of out-paramour the Turk?
The past tense of out-paramour the Turk is out-paramoured the Turk.

Words near out-paramour the Turk in the dictionary

  1. out-of-tree
  2. out-of-universe
  3. out-of-whack
  4. out-of-work
  5. out-paramour
  6. out-paramour the Turk
  7. out-paramoured
  8. out-paramoured the Turk
  9. out-paramouring
  10. out-paramouring the Turk
  11. out-paramours

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: out-paramour the Turk (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-out-paramour the Turk.wav.

Cite this entry: “out-paramour the Turk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/out-paramour_the_turk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.